A Final Verse
by emerald1198
Summary: "Time turns us all cold, Elena." Katherine Pierce walks the ruins of the end of the world.


**New to the fandom and the show, itself. Admittedly, I have not seen the last ten episodes of Season 3, so do forgive me if any details are invalid. Reviews and favorites and just reads in general are all greatly appreciated.**

…

Long ago was the time when wars were relevant to Katherine Pierce.

A most perculiar thing about humans, she's found, is that they fight on grand scales for small reasons, for pride and for wealth and for gods. Yet they fight in hushed privacy, one versus another, for the things that truly matter. A woman begs for her life in an alleyway of a blackened city, and a man pines for her love in a message machine that will never be checked again. And little by little, the world dies in this way – humans kill humans, and humans of those lost feel their hearts wither away until they, too, are just as well left to die.

The world needs only itself to meet its final demise.

Instead, the humans, with short lives and compassion too great, wish only to expedite the process. And so they draw their young hearts with too much to risk and teach them of violence and blood, and find whatever passion it may be within them that will drive them forward.

The trick of it all is to fight for things that will never be settled. That way, the smoke will not clear long enough to reveal the self-destruction lying beneath it all. War, in itself, is merely a distraction as the world and all its hearts dies.

But the blood of a martyr is just as good as any, and so as the dust clears over the battle grounds of strewn bodies, all with hearts untouched, Katherine Pierce feeds.

...

The last human dies under a full moon. It is the Gilbert boy, whose face and shoulders have grown just a few years older since the war took his witch's life. In the end, Bonnie Bennett turned out to be a grander fool than her ancestor before her was.

Though it was the draining of her blood that put her to rest, Katherine's sure the haunting of the Dark Spirits had her begging for death long before. (Humans are not meant to live forever.) And her love, the boy she sacrificed all of nature for, now lies before Katherine under a heap of ravenous vampires, his blood spilled over the sidewalks of Mystic Falls.

The blue-eyed one with the soft face chose to die a natural death over a century ago. They all gathered in the woods outside of the church where his funeral was held. (Surely, they could not show their faces, untouched in seventy years.) It was the witch, the blonde vampire, and the hybrid who cried. The doppelganger, with her two lovers always wrapped around her, was stone-faced yards away from them all. She held her brother, immortal in a mortal body, like she soon would have to let him go.

No one is left to cry for Jeremy Gilbert now. His death is long overdue.

The few frenzy-eyed creatures that have escaped, the strong ones that have taken what they wanted, emerge only when the body is drained of every last drop of blood. They leave behind them a pile of those that fought and lost with nothing to truly lose. Among the dead are two brothers, one with bright blue eyes that will forever remain open as if searching for the sky and the other with eyes closed, finally resting from his race with the past. The Salvatores die as they have lived their whole lives: fighting for Elena Gilbert and all she loves.

...

The blonde vampire hasn't lived to see the war. She died at the hands of Klaus a few decades back, listing off the names of whom she loved in a blur of tears. Caroline Forbes was only the second victim Klaus ever apologized to. He killed her quick and quietly without looking her in the eyes; much like the way he murdered his sister.

The hybrid who loved her has lived until only hours ago. The same can be said for Niklaus.

The last of the Originals dies at the feet of his own creations. As the world, mortal and immortal alike, takes its last breath, the moonlight shines over a daggered body, and Klaus Mikaelson is all alone.

...

The few that are left, mostly the ones who have just refueled themselves with the last human's blood, band together and flee Mystic Falls in a frantic search for beating hearts. Katherine counts only fourteen, and she knows that if they are lucky enough to find one or two last souls, half will be dead in an instant. Those that survive the second feeding will be left to decompose like corpses until they decide that's exactly what they'd rather be.

Katherine stays behind to walk the ruins.

...

Stefan Salvatore lies above his brother, the second of the two to die. They never stop saving each other, Katherine thinks. (They never stop owing each other.)

"Alas, my love," she breathes over his pale, crumbling cheek, "you've lived for a girl who betrayed you. You could have lived for me. At least then, we would have lived our lives knowingly guarded, knowingly selfish."

For Elena Gilbert is a missing corpse.

...

She finds the girl at Wickery Bridge, curled up and shaking and unable to die. The girl with her face cries when she sees her.

"Are you real?" She breathes, her voice white mist in the winter air.

"Do I look it, wretch?"

Elena cries harder. There is a ghost of one brother and two lovers sitting beside her, legs dangling from the side of the bridge. "I couldn't do it," she sobs, "I watched as they drove stakes through Damon and Stefan, watched at my own brother was drained of all his blood, and I couldn't move. I couldn't die."

"It's the Petrova instinct in you," Katherine chuckles.

Elena snaps her head to glare at her with dark, dangerous eyes. "I am nothing like you," she hisses.

Katherine smirks with her blood red lips. "Time turns us all cold, Elena. Even the martyrs."

The girl snaps her ring off and throws it into the water with great force, leaving the sneer on Katherine's face to curl up even more. Slowly, she twists her own ring off, delicately resting it in the palm of her hand.

Elena just watches her from the ground with dying eyes.

"From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire," Katherine murmurs, a quirk to her eyebrow.

"I always used to like ice," Elena mutters, and Katherine chuckles – typical that even in her last moments, Elena Gilbert still denies any resemblance to her ancestor.

"We're vampires, Elena. Our suicidal options are limited."

And with that, Katherine tosses the ring over the railing and watches its ripple effect under the moonlight.

...

Elena shrieks just before Katherine feels the burning of her own flesh. Out over the mountains, the sun is rising, and its flame licks at them both. While her descendant screams and claws at her skin, Katherine is quiet. She presses her face to the ground and sighs when she hears the splash of the younger doppelganger's escape into the river.

Katerina closes her eyes and waits to die.


End file.
